Hello,

just noticed that shop_materialpath attribute, created on imported obj files from Maya, is not recognized by new mat network in h 16. Which is, well, expectable, also i was able to create groups based on shop_materialpath and assign new materials, suitable for mat network, so no problems there.
Anyway I'm still curious, is there a some other automatism like this one, now working with mat network too. Or… shop_materialpath, or something else in this style is considered as obsolete, together with SHOPs. Docs are saying, “SHOPs are obsolete as of Houdini 16”.

The shop_materialpath should actually mostly work with the new mat network. We tried to rename that attribute to something that would reflect both SHOP and VOP materials, but it was entrenched too deeply, and we were forced to leave it alone. But, despite the name, that attribute should work with material VOPs. I wander what exactly is not working. It may be worth submitting a bug with an example files to investigate this further.

Btw, not exactly the same problem but somewhat related, there was an FBX export bug fixed in 16.0.576.

While SHOPs are obsolete, and material VOPs should be used, the SHOPs are not deprecated, and will continue working in H16. I think they will be supported for a while. There is just too much legacy for them to disappear that quickly.

In either case, if you find that something is not working with new material VOPs, please submite a bug or an RFE. Thanks!

Rafal

Thank you kindly for answer.

What actually happening, it is *value* of shop_materialpath attribute in imported .obj file, set to something like /shop/my_material , and that obviously is not recognized by mat network. By changing that value to something like /mat/my_material, let's say using the VOP network ( even without using Material SOP ) - material is recognized by mat network, everything is fine.
In other words, if shop become obsolete in favor of mat network, perhaps it's good idea to “update” the obj importer too, to write something like /mat/my_material, as value of shop_materialpath.

Yes, it sounds like a hardcoded prefix “/shop” that's causing an issue, if the imported material is created as a node in /mat network.

Could you submit a bug with a simple .obj file that shows this problem?
https://www.sidefx.com/bugs/submit/ [sidefx.com]
thanks!